Capitalization in Formal Addresses

Hi there, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, this is John from Dallas, Texas.

Hello, John.

Welcome to the show. What can we help you with?

Thank you.

Well, first of all, you need to know I’ve been married to an English teacher for a long time.

I’m sorry. I mean, congratulations.

Lucky you.

Yes.

And I’ve worked very hard to hone my skills in the English language.

I’m usually the go-to guy for the last edit on important things that are going to clients because I declare war on misplaced commas and apostrophes and split infinitives and such.

But one of them has really got me vexed.

When writing a letter of reference in the salutation to whom it may concern, which of those words do I capitalize?

Oh.

What’s your instinct?

Well, let me start by saying I’ve asked X number of people and gotten X different opinions, and nobody has an authoritative source.

I’ve checked Strunk and White.

I’ve checked Secretarial Handbooks.

My instinct would be to capitalize everything.

My cop-out is to say, dear sir or madam.

I’d really like to get an authoritative opinion on how it should work.

Do you write your documents in Microsoft Word?

Normally, yes.

Okay, because my version of that program capitalizes it.

It automatically does that.

You mean the first letter of all the words?

Yeah.

All five words?

Yeah.

To whom it may concern?

Yeah, if I start typing that, that’s what it does.

Does it do that because you added something to your personal dictionary, or is it built into the autocorrect?

No, it’s built into the autocorrect.

Interesting.

The bottom of this, John, is the problem that this is a matter of style, and it’s not something that’s required by the language itself.

English doesn’t care one way or the other.

English is a system of logic; what logic there happens to be doesn’t care at all whether or not to whom it may concern is capitalized at all.

All right?

And so anytime that you find somebody saying it should be capitalized on the first letters or only two should be capitalized or don’t ever even use that phrase, these are all matters of style, and they tend to be institutional style.

For example, at Purdue, OWL, which is their online writing center, I don’t know what the L stands for, but whatever.

It’s a fairly well-known writing resource on the web.

They say that you should capitalize the first letters of all five words in to whom it may concern.

A number of other places, particularly on job sites, say don’t use that.

If you don’t know who you’re writing to, it’s a terrible mistake.

That’s another whole problem in itself.

You even use that because it seems old-fashioned, maybe a little stilted. And if you don’t know who.

You’re writing to, then maybe you shouldn’t be writing to them. Or maybe you should spend more time finding the actual name of the person so you could put, dear Mr. Smith. Yeah, but I think that’s true if you’re trying to get employment. But I think you raise an interesting question about what if you’re writing a letter of reference that maybe the person is going to use again and again? What do you say? I think that’s a really good question because otherwise, I think to whom it may concern sounds sort of, you know, sort of mad men, you know.

Does it?

I use it.

I think it’s a little antiquated.

Do you?

I totally use it.

But usually it’s with people that I don’t know at all that I have. When you write to, let’s say, your cable company because they’ve overbilled you or something, right?

So it doesn’t really, I don’t care if they’re offended. I have an issue. I just need, I’m polite enough to put a salutation on there, but I don’t care enough that they might be offended that it’s stilted or old fashions. I tend to say dear sir or madam, but that’s kind of a cop-out in terms of the king’s English.

So as I say, I’ve gotten as many different opinions as I’ve asked the question.

Yeah, so what do you end up going with then, John?

Yeah, that’s my question too.

You capitalize it?

Your sir or madam.

Oh, that’s what you do?

You just avoid the problem altogether.

I say capitalize it just to be consistent.

You do, if you use it at all.

Yeah, if you use it. Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m getting kind of attached to it just because it’s one of the few places I see the word whom anymore. I noticed I was using who a few sentences ago. So there’s that.

So here we are. You can add this to your long list of opinions, yet another one. But the matter lies in your hands. You are authorized by the English language to make that decision for yourself, John. Your mission, should you choose to accept it.

I bet we’re going to hear about this.

Sure, yeah.

So stay tuned, John, okay?

Yeah, keep on plugging away, dude.

I will do that.

All right, thanks very much.

All right, thank you very much.

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